WADE family of St Marylebone, Middlesex. Victorian CDV album.

WADE. A Victorian carte-de-visite photograph album containing 23 CDV cards all relating to the Wade family of St Marylebone, Middlesex, and all with identifications in pencil on the reverse of the cards and on the album pages. At the front of the album is a photograph of the National Provincial Bank, followed by portraits of Richard Blaney Wade and his wife Adelaide, and thereafter numerous portraits of their children Herbert, Cecil, Edwin, Philip, Frederick, Reginald, Oswald, and Dora. There is also a portrait of their nurse Anne Browne, and of Fanny Mackay Frew (who married Cecil Wade). The location of photographic studios includes Pau (France), Cambridge, Crouch End, Worcester, London, Tunbridge Wells, Eastbourne, Dover and Paisley. The CDVs are contained in an embossed leather album (5 x 6 inches) with brass clasp. Small split to front cover joint, and several of the internal paper slots have tears.

Richard Blaney Wade (1821 -1897) was born in Kilkenny, Ireland. A painting is known of him dating from 1824 when just 3 years old, made by the Irish born artist Adam Buck (held in the National Gallery of Ireland). Wade trained as a lawyer, then entered banking becoming in 1867 Chariman of the National Provincial Bank of England. He married in 1850 Adelaide Amelia Louisa Teresa Caroline Shadwell at Richmond, Surrey. Over and above a very successful banking career, Richard Wade held office within a number of charitable organisations including the St. Marylebone Female Protection Society and the Samaritan Free Hospital for Women and Children.

Richard and Adelaide Wade had at least 10 children, 8 of whom feature in the album. Their son Cecil (1857-1908) became a stockbroker, and in 1883 married Fanny Mackay Frew at Cardross, Dunbartonshire, Scotland. Fanny, whose photograph by G.McKenzie of Paisley is found in the album next to that of Cecil, became in 1866 one of the first significant commissions for the portrait painter John Singer Sargent after his move to London. The painting is now in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri (see http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/Mrs_Cecil_Wade.html)